It depends on your location and you are hopelessly lost. :(If you are here in Florida, then the answer is yes. Most places north of here your new queen would be hard pressed to find drones and may end up being a drone layer.

For a package to start raising drones, it would have to get strong enough to be producing excess honey. Which probably won't be until the fall. Why the concern about drones with a package. Do you have a new package that is producing a lot of drones? First of all most packages come with drones, they are from strong hives. If on the other hand you are seeing lots of drone brood being pulled out of the hive of a newly packaged hive, this would indicate that you have lost your queen or she never mated.Jim

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"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."--Mark Twain

I'm in the northeast and want to increase the chances that new queens that I rear from my overwintered hives mate with others that have overwintered. I was thinking maybe it would be better to rear queens early to try and avoid them mating with shipped in packages. But if they already have drones in them its probably unavoidable .

"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

I'm in the northeast and want to increase the chances that new queens that I rear from my overwintered hives mate with others that have overwintered. I was thinking maybe it would be better to rear queens early to try and avoid them mating with shipped in packages. But if they already have drones in them its probably unavoidable .

The queen never mates in the hive. She goes out of her way to travel further than her own drones will travel to keep from being inbred.If by Northeast you mean NE USA, you probably do not have any drones. Remember this site is world wide. Please update your location so that we can provide information to your specific area.

« Last Edit: January 22, 2013, 01:04:03 PM by sawdstmakr »

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"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."--Mark Twain

Sorry I'm in NY, USA. I understand that queens don't mate in hives or over the winter. If you rear queens in early spring will it better your chances of having queens mate with drones from overwintered hives?

Are overwintered drone still viable and probable candidate for successful mateting in the spring?

mvh edward :-P

LOL!!.... I'm asking about overwintered hives that have produced drones in the spring. I think I may have chosen the wrong forum to ask my question. I thought there were more expienced beekeepers on here than myself. But, thank you for the replies!

Possibly you did not recognize the answers. When the drone larvae in your colonies have purple eyes, you may be assured that overwntered hives in your area also have drones at that stage. If you start queens then, they with their shorter developemental period will find sexually mature drones to mate with in your area. That time of year, the weather is always problematic and queens have a very short shelf life and must mate during a short time when they are both ready and able. A week of snow and rain can mean your queens will be shooters of blanks--drone layers. That is the most serious downside of early mating to achieve your genetic preferences.

The strong overwintered colonies that will be producing drones in your areas will be far more numerous than those from packages unless you are in the middle of commercial beeks flooding your area with packages. Now if bees from the south are trucked in to large commercial yards in your area, they will drown out the local overwintered genome. At least they do where I am.

Hopefully I have adequately fleshed out the previous answers for your questions. Good luck.

And as you seem to think highly of your self and so little of others I´ll assume that you already have put your drone frames in the hives that you want to use as a breeding bank before you gave them there winter food stores last fall.

This means that the frames are already in place for the spring build up.

Also if you want to have successful matings you will need lots of drones of high quality, to achieve this they will need and abundance of nursing bees and also an ample supply of pollen and nectar early in the season.To achieve this you will have to feed them early and keep feeding them until there is an abundance of nectar and pollen coming into the hive with out failure.

Virgin queens are simple to make any time in the year as long as you have eggs.

To mate a virgin queen you need several days with good weather with a temperature of +20oC

For a drone to be sexually active you need 24days from egg to the drone hatches + 14-20 days for it to mature sexually

Let me help you out, 24days+(14-20days)= 38-44days

38 days in warm hot summer weather44 days in miserable but favorable spring weather.

What to do now?

Decide when you will have multiple days with +20oC and start counting backwards, some may need a calender to help them with this :idunno: this is how you will get the date when you must have your drone comb in your hive.

Also this requires that you have all ready made drone comb, but all us smart people already know this an made a bunch of it last year already :brian: :buttkick: :brian:

I think I may have chosen the wrong forum to ask my question. I thought there were more expienced beekeepers on here than myself.

In my mind Beemaster.com is a great place to meet beekeepers from all over and the pooled knowledge comes from all the knowledgeable beekeepers that participate freely without getting payed for there selfless participation.

The level of knowledge might have sunk a bit at the time you logged on but usually it is full of helpful inspiring beekeepers :roll:

When the drone larvae in your colonies have purple eyes. You can start RAISING NEW QUEENS CELLS.

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

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"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

Since an overwintered hive is more capable of producing drones. I would say that the chances of early drones being form overwintered hives is higher. How much higher I don't know. I don't think you need to be concerned with drones form packages due to it taking much longer for them to get up to speed.

Finally you may increase the rate that queens mate with drones from over wintered hives by producing them early. but you will still have a queen that mates with a dozen or more drones. that you will end up with a wide variety of genetic traits in your colony is guaranteed. In a nut shell I consider concern for traits other than a mated queen when they are open mated is the same as turning your dog loose in the neighborhood in the hopes of getting a pure bred. It could happen but why bother thinking about it.

1. The packages we see around here are not shaken through an excluder...there are drones in the packages.

2. If it is the overwintered local feral population you are hoping to get drones from, they will probably produce drones later than the overwintered kept bees (package genetics?) that are fed in early spring.

I make my own packet bees by harvesting bees from my suppers when I harvest honey.

Its the easiest way and even easier beecause I have a queen excluder on my hives. This also makes it easy to harvest young bees to put into small mating nucs, taking young bees from the supers means I always get the right age and lots of young bees.

1. The packages we see around here are not shaken through an excluder...there are drones in the packages.

2. If it is the overwintered local feral population you are hoping to get drones from, they will probably produce drones later than the overwintered kept bees (package genetics?) that are fed in early spring.

deknow

Most ALL package bees sold in the USA are not shaken through an excluder...

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

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"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

beesnweedsI too am wanting to push for early queens as a way at trying to beat out the africanized genetics in my area. What I have done is to provide the girls with foundationless and or drone comb to them in the fall. Then I have been feeding them like mad. I am hopeful that since they are being fed and feeling pretty sure of themselves they will start to produce an abundance of drones "early." This would then allow me to graft queens and give me a better chance of them mating with genetics I prefer.I am still pretty new and have alot to learn and foul up before I get it right, but I think we have the same goal.Jason

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"It's better to die upon your feet than to live upon your knees!" Zapata

beesnweedsI too am wanting to push for early queens as a way at trying to beat out the africanized genetics in my area. What I have done is to provide the girls with foundationless and or drone comb to them in the fall. Then I have been feeding them like mad. I am hopeful that since they are being fed and feeling pretty sure of themselves they will start to produce an abundance of drones "early." This would then allow me to graft queens and give me a better chance of them mating with genetics I prefer.I am still pretty new and have alot to learn and foul up before I get it right, but I think we have the same goal.Jason

Do you know african drones fly early in the day and are faster on the queens ???

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

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"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

I did not know about them flying earlier but did hear they were faster than European drones

About at 1 Hr.or so.

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

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"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/